Powered by an open-source application called Moodle, UvLe is maintained and operated by the Diliman Interactive Learning Center (DILC). The name "UVLe" is a homophonic play of "Oblê" that's a contraction of "Oblation"--a university symbol. UVLê is a platform for students to freely interact or collaborate with their instructors and fellow students. It is constructed with a pedagogy that imbibes self-discovery, self-instruction, "learning by doing" and experimentation. Learn more about Moodle's pedagogy.

UVLe is now version 2.2, based on Moodle 2.2.3. This means in part that whatever improvements in Moodle can be incorporated into UVLe.

Modules, Plugins, and Blocks

In addition to standard Moodle 2.x features, UVLe 2.x now has the following modules, plugins, blocks:

Navigation

The Dock - provides shortcuts to the main UVLe page, to the courses the user is currently enrolled in, to the user's files, to blogs, to messages, to the form for requesting courses (visible only to users with current teacher role), to the user's contacts.

Resource Uploading and Sharing

GoogleDocs Reposity - enables one to directly share one's GoogleDocs files via UVLe. This feature will be visible after one clicks on "Turn editing on" | "Add a resource" | "File" or "Folder".

Dropbox Repository - enables users to pull files directly from their Dropbox accounts and share documents with fellow UVLe users. Dropbox offers cloud storage and file synchronization across computers. If you still don't have any Dropbox account, click here to get one.

Communication

Quickmail - enables a teacher to quickly email some or all students in the course through a checkbox list. To be able to use Quickmail, the teacher or course manager needs to add the Quickmail block to the course page.

Mindmap[2] - enables the teacher or course manager to provide a "mind mapping" activity area in a course where simple mind maps can be created and saved. This feature is made available via Add an activity under a course topic (after you click on Turn editing on).

These tools require Java-enabled browsers.

Science and Math Tools

Tex Notation Filter - enables the addition of mathematical expressions in UVLe pages. See also Tutorials.

Adding a new committee (Available via "Add an activity" after "Turn editing on" is enabled"

UVLe User Admin Module - a module to manage users who cannot be authenticated by UP Diliman LDAP Server or those who cannot have UP Webmail Accounts

Reservation - enables an UVLe user (with at least a teacher role) to use UVLe as a reservation system for a lab or any facility, for exams or consultation schedules. To activate in a page, turn editing on and 'Add an activity' | 'Reservation.' The number of slots, the opening and closing dates can be specified. Students can cancel their reservation. Reservation can also be limited by Department, Major, Course and additional categories can be requested from Team UVLe. This reservation system is limited by slot numbers rather than by time blocks. A "time slot" based reservation system may become available in future updates.

a teacher wants to hold consultation meetings with her 30 students during her consultation period in September. Instead of doing a back-and-forth of emails trying to schedule such meetings, she sets up a 'Reservation' activity for her students so that they themselves can just sign up via UVLe, given the limited slots per period.

a lab manager deals with the volume of requests for the use of a highly in-demand equipment. Instead of students coming to the lab to sign up, the students can just go to UVLe to file the request at their convenience.

a college sets up a reservation system on UVLe for the use of its audio-visual room.

History

the orginal Uvle

Initially developed by 3 UPD students in 2000 with the guidance of the UPCC, UVLê pursues UP's tradition of excellence in academic computing. It won the "Best of Student Projects (Institute of Higher Learning)" in the Asia Pacific Information and Communications Technology Awards in Kuala Lumpur, in 2001.

From the initial hosting of 33 "virtual classes" during the first semester of 2001, the old UVLe had since hosted close to 880 classes for 16,953 users as of September 2008. It got to version 2.3.3, with advanced features indicated on its Change Log.[3] Old UVLe's beta release was on Nov 13, 2000.[4]

While UVLe is now on Moodle code base, it has a long history of technical innovation. (See Old UVle's changelog.) The pre-Moodle UVLe is now known as "old UVLe" and is no longer supported by the UPCC. The current UVLe was launched on October 6, 2008, on the occasion of DILC's 5th anniversary. DILC now operates and supports the new UVLe.

UVLe 2.0 was released on April 11, 2011. Versioning with the revitalized UVLe, however, is different from that of the old one with a different code base. Now it closely follows Moodle versioning.

Uvle front page circa 2008

UVLe circa 2010

UVLe 2.0 - released 11 Feb 2011

Backup Practice

Snapshots of the UVLe's database and user files are backed up daily in a remote server. UVLe's configs and scripts are also backed up regularly.